Fourth Annual EFF Pioneer Awards

On March 29, at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in
Burlingame, California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will present
its Fourth Annual Pioneer Awards to three individuals who were judged to
have made significant and influential contributions to computer-based
communications or to the empowerment of individuals in using computers.
The 1995 Pioneer Award recipients are Philip Zimmermann, Anita Borg, and
Willis Ware.

Nominations for the Pioneer Awards were carried out over several national
and international computer-communication systems. from the fall of 1994 to
February 1995. A panel of six judges selected the winners from these
nominations.

The Pioneer Award Recipients

Philip Zimmermann is the original author of PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy"),
public-domain encryption software that has become a worldwide standard for
e-mail encryption. Zimmermann has been an outspoken advocate of individual
access to powerful encryption tools, and PGP has been widely praised for
having made it impossible for governments to prevent individuals from
communicating with true privacy. The publication and wide dissemination of
this software and its extensive use on the Internet worldwide has
heightened public-policy debate about encryption, and it has crystallized
opposition to government policies grounded in distrust of citizen access
to true privacy. Zimmermann is the individual who has done the most to put
the power of encryption into the hands of individual citizens.

Anita Borg is the founder and keeper of Systers, an electronic mailing
list for women in computer science. As the result of Borg's efforts, her
list has become a major force for increasing the numbers and improving the
position of women in the computer science field. Although she is also
known for a number of technical contributions to the field of computer
science in the areas of fault tolerant operating systems and cache
performance analysis, she is particularly well-known among women in
computing for the Systers list. Prior to her development of the Systers
list, women in this field had tended to be physically isolated from each
other and rarely able to find even a few role models or others with whom
to share common experiences. Systers has done more to increase
communication among women in computer science than any other available
forum.

Willis Ware, now an emeritus staff member at the RAND corporation in Santa
Monica, California, has been at the forefront of computer-privacy issues
for decades. In 1972, he was appointed Chairman of the DHEW Secretary's
Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems, which issued the
landmark report, "Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens." This
report provided the intellectual foundation for the Federal Privacy Act of
1974. In June 1975, he was appointed by President Ford to the Privacy
Protection Study Commission created by the Privacy Act of 1974 and served
as vice chairman. The Commission made a study of data banks, automated
data-processing programs, and information systems of governmental,
regional, and private organizations and reported its findings to President
Carter and the Congress on June 12, 1977. This report remains the most
extensive examination of private sector record-keeping practices.
Throughout his career, Ware has been both prescient and outspoken on
public-policy issues relating to computers and privacy; he has played a
key role in bringing privacy concerns to the forefront of public policy.